The inventive concept relates to electronic devices including a display device. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to apparatuses and methods for controlling interface circuitry between a timing controller and a display driver.
A display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) device, a plasma display panel (PDP) device, or a light-emitting diode (LED) device usually includes a display driver integrated circuit (hereinafter, “DDI”) that may be used to drive the operation of the display panel. The DDI is a semiconductor chip that is used to drive a huge number of pixels constituting the display device. The DDI controls the operation of these pixels by transferring one or more control signals to create a desired visual image on the display device. Contemporary display devices may include high resolution (e.g., 8K or higher) display panels requiring the use of multiple DDIs (e.g., 24 DDIs in the case of a typical 8K/1G1D display panel).
Respective DDIs may be provided on the display device as separate chips, where each chip may be used to drive a portion of the display panel in response to display data provided by a timing controller. In a commonly used interface approach the timing controller is connected to respective DDIs through a high-speed main link or “data line”. However, this interface approach may prove inadequate when a “command” (e.g., an equalizer setting, a bias current setting, a port selection operation, etc.) is communicated (or transferred) from the timing controller to a DDI through the data line, and this inadequacy may be particularly pronounced when the command being transferred is directed to the operation of the data line itself.